Just William’s walks
HE IS THE rumbustious eleven-year-old who leads make-believe brigands up Ringers Hill. With his beloved mongrel Jumble in tow, he spends his summers trespassin’ in the woods around his home village.
And with his boon companions Ginger, Henry and Douglas – the ‘Outlaws’ – he clambers over stiles and swaggers across Farmer Jenks’ field to hatch plans in the Old Barn. William Brown is the creation of Richmal Crompton and it was 100 years ago this month that Just William, the first of 38 books collating his rollicking escapades, was published.
Crompton’s unruly anti-hero crashed into the world three years earlier in Home magazine, appearing in a short story entitled ‘RiceMould’. It spawned a further 359 stories, published between 1919 and 1970, and originally illustrated by Thomas Henry.
Enjoyed by generations of children and grownups, most are set in an unnamed village between the fictional town of Hadley and neighbouring Marleigh.
Crompton herself insisted it was ‘entirely imaginary… a small country village in Kent – or perhaps Surrey or Sussex, within easy reach of London’.
But it’s likely she drew inspiration from Bromley Common, now in Greater London, having settled there in 1917 to teach Classics at a girls’ school before writing full-time. Just as William’s world moved with the times, its haphazard geography changed to fit the plot of each story.
All the ingredients for a Williamesque adventure – a wood, a stream, a hill, a country lane and an old barn – can probably be found on a walk near you.